watchOS 26 Brings Your iPhone's Control Center to Your Apple Watch - MacRumors
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watchOS 26 Brings Your iPhone's Control Center to Your Apple Watch

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Apple Watches are gaining support for custom Control Center controls.

Apple Watch Custom Control Center watchOS 26
Starting with watchOS 26, controls that are available in the Control Center gallery on an iPhone are automatically available on the Apple Watch as well. This is true even if the iOS app offering the control lacks a corresponding watchOS app. When you tap on one of these controls, the action is performed on the companion iPhone.

watchOS app developers can also create entirely new custom controls for watchOS, and in this case the action is performed on the Apple Watch directly.

The custom controls can even be assigned to the Action button on all Apple Watch Ultra models.

Until now, the Apple Watch's Control Center only offered controls from Apple, such as Wi-Fi, Airplane Mode, Theater Mode, and Flashlight toggles. You can access the Control Center on watchOS by pressing on the side button.

All of these changes mirror those introduced on the iPhone with iOS 18 last year.

watchOS 26 is currently in beta for the Apple Watch Series 6 and newer. The update will likely be released to the general public in September.

Related Roundups: Apple Watch 11, Apple Watch SE 3, Apple Watch Ultra 3
Tag: Control Center
Buyer's Guide: Apple Watch (Don't Buy), Apple Watch SE (Neutral), Apple Watch Ultra (Don't Buy)
Related Forum: Apple Watch

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Top Rated Comments

trusso Avatar
trusso
16 months ago
How about letting me swipe up to get to the watchOS control center (as it used to do) instead of the side-button press? I'd really love to meet the Apple engineer who decided to make that change & not give us the option to switch it back.
Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)
pdaholic Avatar
pdaholic
16 months ago

How about letting me swipe up to get to the watchOS control center (as it used to do) instead of the side-button press? I'd really love to meet the Apple engineer who decided to make that change & not give us the option to switch it back.
Yeah my brain/muscle memory still hasn’t gotten used to all the button and swipe changes over the years.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Oridus Avatar
Oridus
16 months ago

Apple desperately needs to find something, anything, for Apple Watch to do. It’s getting extremely boring with literally same features as 10 years ago. It should be doing way more. But this is the new Timmy Apple so really not that surprising. Innovation has stalled.
What would you like to see it do?
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
T
TechRemarker
16 months ago

Few days or a week long battery life would be a start
That requires a larger battery or worse screen tech and for that people have garmin. The masses instead choose Apple Watches since most can easily charge everyday and prefer the benefits they get. Eventually battery tech will improve and well I’m sure have all week watch batteries with the same features but I think the focus should be much more on
The software first.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
TechWhisperer Avatar
TechWhisperer
16 months ago
Very cool and handy!
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
G
GlassFingers
16 months ago

How about letting me swipe up to get to the watchOS control center (as it used to do) instead of the side-button press? I'd really love to meet the Apple engineer who decided to make that change & not give us the option to switch it back.
Yes this!!!!
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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